The Wolf Of All Streets - Helium Blockchain: Decentralizing Wireless Networks, True Crypto Adoption | Amir Haleem

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

Amir Haleem, Founder of Helium, talks about his plans to build “The People’s Network” - a decentralized, wireless network powered by blockchain that could wrap the entire globe, forever changing the Telecom Industry. Helium allows users to simply plug in a hotspot, join the network, and earn Helium’s token, HNT, as a reward. Amir shares how this innovative business model allowed his company to go from 0 to 1,000,000 nodes in less than 3 years, how Helium will continue to scale, and what hurdles they’ll have to jump along the way. JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER 📩 https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen Episode Links: Amir’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/amirhaleem Helium’s Website: https://www.helium.com/ Production & Marketing Team: https://penname.co/ FOLLOW SCOTT MELKER • Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wolfofallstreets • Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io • Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe • Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3FASB2c SHOW NOTES 00:00 Intro 00:15 Amir Haleem Intro 00:41 Why People Love Helium 01:59 What Makes Helium Different 04:35 How Does Helium Scale? 08:19 Amir Was Late to Crypto 09:46 Other Applications for Decentralization 11:50 Helium’s Business Model 12:58 Regulatory Hurdles 17:20 How to Get Started with Helium 19:07 Helium’s End Goal 23:36 Thanks for Watching

We have some very, very ambitious innovators in the crypto space, but perhaps none of them have greater ambition and larger dreams than Amir Halim from Helium Network. They are building a decentralized wireless network that will surround the entire globe and then eventually also move into 5G, meaning you won't even need a phone. You don't want to miss this conversation and what's coming in the future for decentralized wireless. So I've told this story before, but one of my friends who's not necessarily crypto native, he owns an advertising agency, is absolutely obsessed with Helium to the point where he's buying real estate all over our town just to put Bobcat miners up, puts an antenna on the top and he gets as high up there as possible. Are you seeing that sort of level of fanaticism about what you guys are building? Yeah. I think two things are interesting.

One is that Helium has attracted a whole universe of people that are not crypto native, for want of a better word. They don't participate in the crypto ecosystem other than through Helium, which I think is really interesting. We made mining HNT and participating in the Helium network very much like a consumer product. And I think that resonated with a lot of people. And then, yeah, I call them prosumers. I don't know what the right term is in that universe. But those guys that are going the extra step and putting antennas on roofs. And we got people renting space on radio towers and cell towers.

So it's really interesting. You get to participate in the telco industry for the first time as a consumer. And I think that's very unusual and kind of Airbnb-like, except in a different domain. It's, I think, fascinating. Why is what you're building so necessary? I mean, we have wireless internet. We have networks. So what makes this so different and so necessary? I mean, we have wireless internet, right? We have networks. So what makes this so different and so impactful? I think, you know, part of what's a challenge. So when we started

Helium, like we were very focused on IoT, right? So like sensors and that kind of data. And that is an industry that has never been well served, right? Like there's never been like a big IoT network to use, right? It just never existed. And so building one is hard because the cost of building networks is really high. But with sensors and IoT, like you have an application or a use case that needs to be really cheap by its nature, right?

Like you want sensors on like every single package that ever gets shipped or you want to like monitor like acres of farmland and you know you can't really do that with expensive sensors and so the cost of building versus the revenue generated for iot networks doesn't make any sense and so building a network this way for iot makes complete sense as we think about like helium expanding and like what's going to happen next with helium it's not going to just be IoT, right? It's going to be other types of network, like we just announced that we're moving into the 5G domain. And I think that becomes a slightly different type of conversation, right? It's like we already have cellular networks, right? They already exist, like for the most part,

they're decent. But I think there are other aspects of that industry which aren't great, right? Like I have always had privacy concerns, right? Like I'm not, I don't know what carriers are doing with our data. I think coverage starts to get questionable as people and populations grow, right? Like it's very expensive to keep creating new coverage everywhere. So allowing people to sort of participate in that industry is like an interesting way of like hedging against like the traditional infrastructure model, right? Like first of all, you get to build more coverage. And second of all, you get people to actually own their own infrastructure. And I think that second part

is probably the most important as far as far as I'm concerned, right? Like people actually get to like, own the thing that they use, right? Like Airbnb was a good model for that, right? Like, if you have a house, you can now turn it into a hotel, basically, right? And there's a marketplace for that. And I think it's been like the telecom industry turn it into a hotel basically, right? And there's a marketplace for that. And I think it's been like the telecom industry is so difficult to get into, right? Like you've got spectrum issues. You've got the cost of hardware. You've got like everything about it is like complicated. And I think turning it into something simple and straightforward is like the magic basically that I think Helium has unlocked, which is that anyone can just do this.

And then you're like a wireless network operator, like a little mini ISP or something. And I think that is going to be fascinating to watch over the next decade or so. It's extremely ambitious because you start as an idea, but for this to work at scale, you need to have, I would imagine, millions and millions of people participating, if not more. How do you get to the level where you actually

have coverage everywhere? Yeah. I mean, the Helium network grew from, I mean, we actually launched right here in Austin in 2019. And it grew from zero to like a million nodes in the space of, you know, less than three years, which is amazing, right? It's sort of like the testament to the to the like the power of the idea and I think with cellular it's even more interesting right like with with 5G it's more interesting because people actually have tangible like things they can use on a cellular network. IoT for consumers is still a little bit nebulous right like what what is an IoT product you know that that a normal consumer would use. Today it it's mostly B2B applications. So I think there's a little bit of a disconnect between I'm a person running a hotspot and what do I do with

it? How do I use it? So part of what I think is going to happen with 5G is that that gap gets closed, right? Is that you're building a network and then you also get to use it, right? Or your neighbors get to use it or your friends get to, you know what I mean? And so I think people will become excited by the notion that I'm building this network and I'm both generating revenue from like actually operating it, but it's also useful for me, right? Like I no longer need AT&T or Verizon or Timo, you know, like it's a different idea. And getting to build something that you consume yourself, I think is exciting. And I think as it grows, people will get more and more excited by that and sort of understand the power of what they're doing.

It's interesting that you've gotten to a million without that asset. Right. So, I mean, I have to imagine that most people that are doing it because of the financial incentive at this point. I can only speak for a lot of the people that I know, but they're like, I'm going to mine this token. I'm going to make money. I simply have to put this thing at the highest point I can find in my house and I'll do well. So, I mean, I would imagine that what you just said is sort of the final boss or the unlock for scale. Yeah, it's, you know, I think with Helium so far, you had like three categories of user, like there were like IoT enthusiasts who had been doing this before Helium existed. There are like crypto people, right,

who are in it mostly for mining and earning HNT, which is great. And then the last group I would call like telco anarchists or something, right? Like guys that like just hate that like establish infrastructure and want some part in like trying to change it. And like I said, I think with cellular

and with Wi-Fi and like other stuff that comes in the future on Helium, like it's going, I think that last part is going to be more exciting to people, right? Like, of course, some people are just going to be in it for money, like mining crypto is exciting and interesting, like who knows what will happen. But getting to actually like play a role in sort of this disruption, I think is really exciting for people. And like I said, Airbnb, Uber, like those kinds of of marketplace examples were really interesting to watch, where I don't think anyone liked cab companies. There just wasn't a thing that anyone felt any affinity

towards. And so as soon as there was a better option, everyone moved to the better option. And it served both ends of the market. Consumers of it were happier, because they get to press a button and a car shows up in two minutes. And then drivers all of a sudden had a new revenue stream, a completely new to business model.

They're going out and buying cars and leasing them specifically for this purpose. And I expect Helium to evolve that way too. And there will be a, I think your friend is a good example of someone who goes the extra mile, like putting big antennas up on roofs. And the protocol kind of rewards you for that. The more coverage you create, the more you earn. And that's kind of what you want, right? Like you want people

to build a big coverage network. Which one of those three would you have described yourself as when you started? I was somewhere between an IoT enthusiast and a telco anarchist. Like I was super late to crypto. Like just embarrassingly late., like obviously had kept track of Bitcoin and to some degree Ethereum over the years, but really wasn't until like 2016 or 17 that I like paid any close attention to it. So I was definitely an idiot on the crypto stuff. I mean, we're all late, right? I started in 2016. Is there ever a person that you've met in crypto who wasn't like, ah, but those earlier guys. I mean, we're late, but also still ridiculously early. That's my point.

You know what I mean? It's like there are those guys that have been doing this since like 2009 or whatever, and hats off to those people for realizing something that I didn't realize a decade later. But it's still so early, right? I mean, I still think that user interface for using crypto and blockchains is, like, not ideal. You know, like, having to go through exchanges isn't ideal.

Like, the whole process is a pain. Like, you've got a two-factor auth everywhere. And, you know, it's like, just moving tokens around is still too hard. You have to be crypto-native, as you said before, to even not be utterly terrified that you're going to make some huge mistake. I mean, being your own bank, obviously, is a massive responsibility. But I think what you're building sort of speaks to a greater ethos within the crypto community of decentralizing sort of centralized and embedded structures. I mean, telecom is one of the biggest ones in the world, right? And so this application that you have beyond exactly what you're building, do you see other ways to decentralize similar systems?

Yeah, I mean, and there are some really interesting ones, right? Like if I just think of some of the projects that I have admired over the years, I think, for example, Filecoin was a big inspiration to us at the start, or at least to me. And that's another one where I think sort of like privacy is a thing and like sort of turning people's sort of unused disk space into storage is a really interesting concept.

Arweave does kind of the same thing. I love Arweave. Yeah, and there's other interesting products, like Audius I think is a fascinating one. You know, my co-founder at helium is sean fanning from napster and so like audios feels like sort of the web 3 version of napster or something right it's sort of like the evolution of that um other stuff i mean like render i think is fascinating like i was in the video game world for like a big part of my career so like kind of understand the need

for like distributed rendering farms and so just a lot of it really interesting stuff and and i think some of it like someone once told me crypto is only useful for things that you either either can't be done or or to or illegal to be done right and i'm not sure if that's correct like there's a little bit of an optimization there like and render is a perfect example of that right where you can do it today but it's inefficient and it's expensive and it sort of doesn't make sense. So I think there's that world where just optimizing things and distributing where it lives that crypto is incredibly powerful for. And Helium was a sort of perfect example of using crypto to bootstrap something that was otherwise

pretty much impossible. You always had this chicken egg thing, right? You don't have users until there's a network and you can't build a network until there's users to pay for it. And so like you just never start, right? And you're just kind of sitting there. And so using crypto as a way to like sort of start the economic flywheel spinning, I think is a really fascinating like, you know, development. And I still don't think we've seen the most interesting applications yet. Yeah, I understand the incentivization model, obviously, for your fan base and your users. How

does the company actually make money? So far, we have only focused on network building, right? Like our intention, like we don't, we haven't generated any revenue, right? Like we don't, we hadn't looked at it that way. I think over time we will start to evolve and like we would ideally like to sort of have a revenue model built on top of the network at some point in the future. But at the start, nothing really matters other than building the network, right?

And so one of the neat things is like you get to sort of monetize the network through tokens, right? And so we hold some HNT and that was sort of our, that was our sort of reward, I suppose, for like building the network, right? And so we had spent our entire last four or five years, maybe longer, just building the technology

and the hardware and the firmware and like everything that goes along with getting this out there. And we spent a significant amount of time marketing and doing business development and trying to attract customers and users to the network. And that's sort of where we're still focused. I think we'll be announcing a bunch of stuff in the future about things that we want to do next or other ideas that we have. But for now, we're still very much focused on network building.

Are there any glaring regulatory hurdles or obstacles outside of government or regulation that you see could become problematic in the future? I think we are just scratching the surface of like regulatory problems that, or I shouldn't say problems. It's unclear. Like it's been frustrating, I think for us and like pretty much anyone in the crypto space that does this to figure out how to navigate regulation. I don't think there's anyone that at least I've interacted with that doesn't want to try and follow the rules. We just don't know what the rules are. And that's a little bit

frustrating and I know there's good work from various senators and others that are trying to improve the situation and that's awesome. I think in our world we also bridge into the physical world a lot more than most blockchain networks do. And so you have the FCC to think

about and you have different countries have their own versions of FCCs and so that's I wouldn't say it's a it's a problem as much as it just adds complexity right like if if you want to like sell hardware in you know Europe then you have to go certify it there right and so um it makes distributing and decentralizing like everything that you do much more critical. If we had been the single manufacturer of hardware, we never could have grown the network very big because it's just too expensive and too complicated to go do all this.

But by allowing anyone to go build the hardware, you take advantage of the fact that there are people that understand the regulation in those countries or have already done some of this work before. And so that's just a part of Helium that is different to someone, you know, to something like a Solana or an Ethereum or something like that, right, who don't really have to, like,

worry about the physical world very much. So I'm jealous of that sometimes, right? It's such a pain sometimes. But, yeah, overall, I don't think we've seen the last of, like, what, you know, having to figure out how to navigate the regulatory space with crypto. Yes. I mean, we all know how difficult it is in the United States that most people just completely opt out.

If you're building something in crypto, I think right now most people, it's very bold to even attempt to do it here. There are a few who obviously do. That said, since you now have to navigate the regulatory environment in every single country on the planet, basically. Can you eventually build this into a fully global network? Are there places it's just never going to happen? Like, I can't imagine in North Korea it's going to be particularly popular. But, you know, in general, can you build a global network out of this with all that in mind? Yeah, I mean, and we have.

So helium is growing at something like 5,000 cities a month or some rate like that, which is crazy. It is unfortunate. I mean, I think the U.S. sort of stance on crypto is a little dangerous in the long term, right? Like as exactly as you're describing, like some of the smartest minds are like leaving the U.S. to go do this somewhere else, right? And I think that's an existential risk for the country over time, right? Like if your smartest brains are like no longer here, right? Because you scared them away. That's terrible policymaking, right? And so I do think there's that concern. And certainly we know, I'm sure you know, like a whole bunch of like founders

of very ambitious projects that just won't do it here. So that's a thing. And as you said, there's some regimes where it's going to be practically impossible to pull it off. I wouldn't want to try and run a hotspot in North Korea. I don't know about China. Just keeping abreast of all the news is really, really difficult. It's practically impossible. So, yeah, I don't know.

I think, I hope we settle in some place where the rules are clear, I guess, would be my desire, right? Like, as long as everyone understands what we're supposed to be doing. I mean, they even say that bad clarity is better than lack of clarity. Yeah. Just tell me what I can't do. Exactly.

It's like, everyone I know, you know, who tries to do something like this, it's just all we want is, like, info. Like, what are we supposed to do

or not do? Not do is fine too, right? And so, but, you know, it's going to get better. Like, I think people are naturally scared

of crypto. It's a completely, when I say people, I mean governments. It's a terrifying idea, right? That, like, all of a sudden, like, money supply is, like, no longer under control, right? governments. It's a terrifying idea, right? That like all of a sudden like money supply is like no longer under control, right? Like it's decentralized. It's a really

crazy concept. So I think people are naturally skeptical of it and scared of it, but it will evolve and hopefully get better. At the most basic entry level, how can an individual become a part of the network? The easiest way to get involved is always to just buy a hotspot. You know, in the Helium network, hotspots are a combination of like a wireless access point and a crypto miner. That basically is the easiest way of thinking about it. You just kind of stick it in your window or you put it on a roof if you want to be ambitious and you're joining in building this big network and you're earning HNT, which is the helium currency,

that's always the easiest way to get involved. We have a 5G network now that's in the process of rolling out, so there are now 5G hotspots that you can buy. So if you want to be sort of at the forefront of building the next wave of helium, that's definitely the place to start. How much knowledge of technology do you need to be able to do this or is it really as simple as plugging it into an ethernet cable

or wireless obviously and finding a optimal spot and running with it that's it i mean i think that i think that was a big part of the innovation for us was like how do we make like no crypt mining crypto is not mining mining crypto is not for your average person. Yeah, right. It's kind of a mess. And so is running like a, you know, a small cellular base station, right? Like that's not for average people either. But I think turning those two things into something that a consumer just has to like plug in and use a phone app to configure is part of the magic. And I think that's a big part of like where crypto needs to go.

Like it just has to be easier to use. And I think we did that really well with Helium, and it's part of why the network has gotten so big, is that literally anyone can do it by just plugging in a device. So let's say that you completely and utterly disrupt Telcom. 5G people basically have their own phone network operating from the roof of their house. Is that the end goal, or is there something even bigger

10 years, 20 years down the road? I think it's... One of the most fascinating things for me about Helium is it's sort of endless, right? Like, I think cellular is, like, one venue which I think makes complete sense to look at next. So the things like Wi-Fi, there are now also going to be decentralized VPNs on Helium.

I wish people cared more about privacy. I know they don't enough yet. They say they do. Yeah. They will. While searching Google on their iPhone. Right. That's right.

Yeah. So VPNs, I think I've always been interested in, but I also understand that like people, it's not mass market yet. I think Apple is actually doing really good work in like sort of making that more mass market. Eventually, I would love to see uh you know broadband delivered to the home this way you know i think having super high speed wireless like

broadband is sort of the next thing that to me is interesting uh because today at least in the states you've got like whatever single cable provider yeah and that's kind of it so i'm stuck with comcast whether i like it or not i'm stuck with cocast, whether I like it or not. I'm stuck with Cox, and I despise it. The worst thing in my life is dealing with Cox. Yeah, and this is one of the interesting things. It's such a big industry, and I've never met anyone who likes any of the players in the industry. There's no one that's happy with their telco,

whether it's AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Comcast, Cox. No one has a favorable opinion. And I think that's really interesting, right? And sort of speaks to sort of like what could be done is that everyone desires like at least options, right? Like feeling that I'm stuck with one provider just doesn't feel fair, right? It doesn't feel correct in some way. So I think being able to deliver like high-speed wireless to the home for like broadband to me is another place that we need to spend time and something that I

think society needs and there are others trying to do it too they just aren't necessarily doing it the same way but having the options and being able to pick based on like privacy or security or speed or cost or whatever is is I think really really important I use a boutique phone company called Afani that protects my sim card so that I won't get SIM swapped because I've been SIM swapped so many times on the major networks, even when they tell me that every single protection is in place. So, I mean, there's already people who are doing this in creative ways just to opt out of those systems. Yeah, no, we love those guys. We've been talking to them also. And I think there's going to be those niches right where i think

people high profile crypto people are always at risk of sim swaps and you know like that that whole model is it just it's too easy right it's too easy to be sim swapped right you have to call someone to pretend that you're you're the person and know like or just throw a guy at t-mobile for 200 bucks so yeah, yeah, so I think there's going to be, like, different audiences and different segments. But they can overlap. And like I said, Apple spent a lot of time recently, like, focusing on privacy as a message, which I think is great. Whether they're actually doing it the right way, I don't know. But they're at least educating, like, the sort of masses about privacy matters.

It's important. And I think we feel like it doesn't matter, but it will. I know there was a dearth of miners for a while that it was a large backup if you wanted to participate in the network and you had to wait for, I know my friend, I can say, was buying Bobcats. It was like two months, three months, six months.

Are we now at a point where you can really get involved pretty quickly or is it still backed up? Yeah, no, I think it's catching up or has caught up. Bear markets help with that. Yeah, there's that. There was also, you know, also like a significant part of of like COVID didn't help, right? Like having, you know, having the supply chain issue was not ideal, right?

Like every supply chain for every industry was broken. And some degree still is broken, right? You still can't buy a new car anywhere, because of like processor shortages and so that's still a thing um but as far as i understand like it's greatly improved and like you can probably get hold of a hot spot in a reasonable period of time now but there was a time when it was like you know an 18 month wait or something like that right in the back order were like millions um so i think it's improving now and you can actually get hold of one in a normal period of time good problem to have yeah no it's i mean it was it's good and real at the same time right like people were were rightfully like disgruntled

at the fact that they like ordered the thing and it took a year to arrive or whatever so good problem to have but also like a real you know a real problem yeah absolutely well i love what you guys are building and again I know people who are tremendous fans and I am too. So thank you so much for taking the time. I look forward to catching up down the road and seeing how much further this is along. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Thank you very much. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you haven't already left a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please do that now. Spotify just added ratings, so please go ahead and click that five star. I'll see you guys next time.